Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) using the blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) contrast was used to study sensory processing in the brain of isoflurane-anesthetized mice. The use of a cryogenic surface coil in a small animal 9.4T system provided the sensitivity required for detection and quantitative analysis of hemodynamic changes caused by neural activity in the mouse brain in res...

The chronology of the component processes subserving working memory (WM) and hemodynamic response lags has hindered the use of fMRI for exploring neural substrates of WM. In the present study, however, participants completed full trials that involved encoding two or six letters, maintaining the memory set over a delay, and then deciding whether a probe was in the memory set or not. Additionally...

After its discovery in 1990, blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) contrast in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has been widely used to map brain activation in humans and animals. Since fMRI relies on signal changes induced by neural activity, its signal source can be complex and is also dependent on imaging parameters and techniques. In this review, we identify and describe the ...

Traditionally functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has been used to map activity in the human brain by measuring increases in the Blood Oxygenation Level Dependent (BOLD) signal. Often accompanying positive BOLD fMRI signal changes are sustained negative signal changes. Previous studies investigating the neurovascular coupling mechanisms of the negative BOLD phenomenon have used concurr...

Isoflurane is a well-known volatile anesthetic. However, it remains equivocal whether its effects on BOLD signal differ depending on the types of intracranial structures, such as capillaries and large blood vessels. We compared dose-dependent effect of isoflurane on the basal BOLD signals in distinct cerebral structures (tissue structure or large vessels) using high resolution T2*-images at 9.4...

This study reports the first measurement of the relative cerebral metabolic rate of oxygen utilization (rCMRO(2)) during functional brain activation with sufficient temporal resolution to address the dynamics of blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) MRI signal. During rat forepaw stimulation, rCMRO(2) was determined in somatosensory cortex at 3-sec intervals, using a model of BOLD signal and meas...

Introduction The majority of studies investigating the linearity of the BOLD signal suggested existence of significant nonlinearity. In these studies, repeated stimuli led to successively smaller BOLD amplitudes and delayed BOLD onset latencies when the inter-stimulus interval (ISI) is shorter than a few seconds. The mechanism of nonlinearity in the BOLD signal remains unknown, partially becaus...

The purpose of the present study was to gain more insight into the blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD)-contrast functional MRI (fMRI) in the brain and its connection to EEG, both in global and local scales of their temporal and spatial relations. BOLD signal changes were studied during hyperventilation (HV) induced EEG reactivity of intermittent rhythmic delta activity (IRDA). The BOLD signal i...

Introduction The BOLD signal is a weak signal, and hence if no BOLD signal is found in an area this does not automatically mean there is no neural activity in that area. Signal dropout, artifacts, instability, physiological noise, RF-coil inhomogeneity etc. can all reduce the SNR locally leading to decreased detectability of the BOLD signal. Here we illustrate that calculation of the spatial di...

middle and lower cortical layers. The 30s stimulation period is marked with a red bar. The measured BOLD signal is the sum of the modeled response (the convolution of the input signal and the h, transfer function) and the residual signal (red line). The residue signals in every case are within the variability of the BOLD measurement, which indicates a good fit of the convolution model. Transcor...